Priyanka Chopra is a beautiful human being. The India-born actress and former Miss World pageant winner spoke to the Associated Press about what it was like going to an American high school as a teenager.

The star, who’s married to Nick Jonas, revealed that she went through endless racist bullying.

“I was treated differently because I’m brown,” she said. “I had, you know, really racist behavior when I was in high school in 10th grade. I was called ‘Brownie,’ ‘Curry,’ [told to] ‘go back on the elephant you came on,’ and that really affected me when I was a kid and affected my self-esteem.”

Priyanka permanently moved to the U.S. when she 13 years old to live with her aunt, and eventually bounced from state to state — attending schools in Massachusetts, Iowa, and Queens, New York.

“My life was an epitome of imperfection. I’m not perfect like Aishwarya Rai, beautiful, stunning,” she stated in 2012 during an interview with International Business Times. “I was a gawky kid, had low self-esteem, came from a modest middle-class background, had white marks on my legs, but only thing I knew was to work hard and learn. I didn’t know how to act or win a beauty pageant,” she said, adding “But I was damn hard working. Today, my legs sell 12 brands.”

See her interview below: